Jim Butcher - Changes

“Arianna!” I called again. “You were too great a coward to accept my challenge when I gave it to you in Edinburgh! Now I am here, in the heart of the power of the Red King! Do you still fear to face me, coward?”

“What?” Thomas muttered under his breath.

“This is not an assault,” Sanya added, disapproval in his voice.

I ignored them. I was the one with the big voice. “You see what I have done to your rabble!” I called. “How many more must die before you come out from behind them, Duchess? I am come to kill you and claim my child! Stand forth, or I swear to you, upon the power in my body and mind, that I will lay waste to your strong place. Before I die, I will make you pay the price for every drop of blood—and when I die, my death curse will scatter the power of this place to the winds!

“Arianna!” I bellowed, and I could not stop the hatred from making my voice sharply edged with scorn and spite. “How many loyal servants of the Red King must die tonight? How many Lords of Outer Night will taste mortality before the sun rises? You have only begun to know the power I bring with me this night. For though I die, I swear to you this: I will not fall alone .”

I indulged in a little bit of melodrama at that point: I brought forth soulfire—enough to sheath my body in silver light—as my oath rolled out over the land, through the ruins, and bounced from tree to tree. It cast a harsh light that the nearest surviving vampires cringed away from.

For a long moment, there was no sound.

Then the drums and the occasional clash of the gong stopped.

A conch shell horn, the sound unmistakable, blew three high, sweet notes.

The effect was immediate. The vampires surrounding us all retreated until they were out of sight. Then a drumbeat began again, this time from a single drummer.

“What’s happening?” Thomas asked.

“The Red King’s agents spent the past couple of days trying to kill me or make sure I showed up here only as a vampire,” I said quietly. “I’m pretty sure it’s because the king didn’t want the duchess pulling off her bloodline curse against me. Which means that there’s a power play going on inside the Red Court.”

“Your explanation isn’t one,” Thomas replied.

“Now that I am here,” I said, “I’m betting that the Red King is going to be willing to attempt other means of undercutting the duchess.”

“You don’t even know he’s here.”

“Of course he is,” I said. “There’s a sizable force here, as large as any we’ve ever seen take the field during the war.”

“What if it isn’t his army? What if he’s not here to run it?” Thomas asked.

“History suggests that kings who don’t exercise direct control over their armies don’t tend to remain kings for very long. Which must be, ultimately, what this is all about—diminishing Arianna’s power.”

“And talking to you does that how?”

“The Code Duello,” I said. “The Red Court signed the Accords. For what Arianna has done, I have the right to challenge her. If I kill her, I get rid of the Red King’s problem for him.”

“Suppose he isn’t interested in chatting?” Thomas said. “Suppose they’re pulling back because he just convinced someone to drop a cruise missile on top of us?”

“Then we’ll get blown up,” I said. “Which is better than we’d get if we had to tangle with them here and now, I expect.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “Just so we have that clear.”

“Pansy,” Murphy sneered.

Thomas leered at her. “You make my stamen tingle when you talk like that, Sergeant.”

“Quiet,” Sanya murmured. “Something is coming.”

A soft lamp carried by a slender figure in a white garment came toward us down the long row of columns.

It proved to be a woman dressed in an outfit almost exactly like Susan’s. She was tall, young, and lovely, with the dark red-brown skin of the native Maya, with their long features and dark eyes. Three others accompanied her—men, and obviously warriors all, wearing the skins of jaguars over their shoulders and otherwise clad only in loincloths and heavy tattoos. Two of them carried swords made of wood and sharpened chips of obsidian. The other carried a drum that rolled off a steady beat.

I thought there was something familiar about the features of the three men, but then I realized that they weren’t personally familiar to me. It was the subtle tension of their bodies, the hints of power that hung about them like a very faint perfume.

They reminded me quite strongly of Susan and Martin. Half vampires. Presumably just as dangerous as Susan and Martin, if not more so.

The jaguar warriors all came to a halt about twenty feet away, but the drum kept rolling and the girl kept walking, one step for each beat. When she reached me, she unfastened her feathered cloak and let it fall to the ground. Then, with the twist of a piece of leather at each shoulder, the shift slid down her body into a puddle of soft white around her feet. She was naked beneath, except for a band of leather around her hips, from which hung an obsidian-bladed knife. She knelt down in a slow, graceful motion, a portrait in supplication, then took up the knife and offered its handle to me.

“I am Priestess Alamaya, servant of the Great Lord Kukulcan,” she murmured, her voice honeyed, her expression serene. “He bids you and your retainers be welcome to this, his country seat, Wizard Dresden, and offers you the blood of my life as proof of his welcome and his compliance with the Accords.” She lowered her eyes and turned her head to the right to bare her throat, the carotid artery, while still holding forth the blade. “Do with me as you will. I am a gift to you from the Great Lord.”

“Oh, how thoughtful,” the Leanansidhe murmured. “You hardly ever meet anyone that polite, these days. May I?”

“No,” I said, and tried to keep the edge of irritation out of my voice. I took the knife from the girl’s hands and slid it into my sash, and let it rest next to the cloth sack I had made from a knotted inside-out Rolling Stones T-shirt. The shirt had been in my gym bag of contraband ever since it had been a gym bag of clean clothes for when I went to the gym. I had pressed the shirt ( bah-dump-bump, ching ) into service when I realized the one other thing I couldn’t do without during this confrontation. It was tied to my grey cloth sash.

Then I took the young woman’s arm and lifted her to her feet, sensing no particular aura of power around her. She was mortal, evidently a servant of the vampires.

She drew in a short breath as she felt my hand circle her wrist and rose swiftly, so that I didn’t have to expend any effort lifting her. “Should you wish to defile me in that way, lord, it is also well within your rights as guest.” Her dark eyes were very direct, very willing. “My body is yours, as is my blood.”

“More than a century,” Murphy muttered, “and we’ve gone from ‘like a fish needs a bicycle’ to this.”

I cleared my throat and gave Murphy a look. Then I turned to the girl and said, “I have no doubt about your lord’s integrity, Priestess Alamaya. Please convey us to his seat, that I may speak with him.”

At my words, the girl fell to her knees again and brushed her long, dark hair across my feet. “I thank you for my life, wizard, that I may continue to serve my lord,” she said. Then she rose again and made an imperious gesture to one of the jaguar warriors. The man immediately recovered her clothing and assisted her in dressing again. The feather cloak slid over her shoulders once more, and though I knew the thing had to be heavy, she bore it without strain. “This way, lord, if you please.”

“Love this job,” Sanya murmured. “Just love it.”